Pale blue dot Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Dr. Carl Sagan, called the best science educator in the world of the twentieth century. It has reached the minds of hundreds of millions of people and has inspired generations of young people to dedicate themselves to science. On this occasion, his son Nick and Cornell University have decided to dedicate a "blog-a-thon
. This is my contribution: a translation of what is his most famous song. Read it carefully. The original version appears on the website of the introduction of the Planetary Society
and instead the text appears on the book "Pale Blue Dot
" by Carl Sagan.
Carl Sagan was an idea to turn Voyager's camera back towards the planet that had launched the probe in order to reveal to the inhabitants of this planet their "true circumstance and condition." After much resistance, Dr. Sagan had the better of February 14, 1990, from a distance of 6.4 billion miles, Voyager 1 captured this image of our Earth. Here the whole world fills only 0.12 pixel and appears as a minute sliver of light. The light rays are not apparent rays of the sun, but an effect of diffraction in the camera lens, the result of having bet so close to the Sun now one of our most famous photographs ever taken from space, this perspective of humility of our beloved home is part of the immeasurable will of Dr. Sagan.
Look again at that dot. And 'here. E 'house. And 'us. On it, all those you love, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived his life. All of our joys and sorrows, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, self-confident, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and subject, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every preacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme commander", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a point. Think of the endless cruelties given by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel to the inhabitants scarcely distinguishable of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds.
Our ostentation, our imagined self-esteem, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastitudine, there nessun'indicazione which may help elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only known world that could support life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, where our species may migrate. Visit, yes. Living, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we play our cards.
It 'been said that astronomy is a humbling experience and builds character. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human vanity that this distant image of our tiny world. For me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and protect the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot"
